Wood Legislation - speech in reply

The Hon. PENNY SHARPE (Parliamentary Secretary) [10.59 p.m.], in reply: I
thank all members who have contributed to this debate. There have been some very
well considered contributions and I believe that a genuine debate has been had
canvassing the issues. I particularly acknowledge the contributions of Mr Ian
Cohen, the Hon. Robert Brown and Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile on this important
piece of legislation. I also acknowledge the thoughtful contributions by the
Hon. Robyn Parker and the Hon. Trevor Khan. The bill contains significant
reforms and has required close attention by all members. The Government has
responded very carefully to all of the matters raised. I note that the
Opposition has welcomed the bill as a comprehensive response to the Hon. James
Wood's special commission of inquiry. These landmark reforms are vital to the
future wellbeing of children and it is critical that they are enacted and
implemented without delay.

As a result of the Government's comprehensive
response to the Special Commission of Inquiry we are entering a new era in child
protection. This new phase of reform follows a very significant change that has
occurred over the past several years as a result of the $1.2 billion reform
package that the Government introduced in 2002. Justice Wood acknowledged in his
report the progress that has been achieved as a result of that package. He found
that enormous gains had been made despite the Department of Community Services
dealing with an increasingly complex client base and a spiralling number of
reports.

Justice Wood concluded that the contemporary challenge facing
the child protection system in New South Wales is no different to that facing
all child protection systems across Australia and overseas. New South Wales is
not alone in facing a rising number of reports of children in need of help or
protection. Those reports concern families who are confronted with serious
challenges—problems that are usually interrelated and often intergenerational.
Such problems include domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness
and socioeconomic disadvantage.

It is important to note that many parents
who have difficulty caring for their children were abused themselves as
children. The Government's response to the Wood inquiry—known as Keep Them
Safe—is aimed at breaking the cycle. As the Minister for Community Services has
said on many occasions, the best protectors for a child are the child's parents.
This is a critical point. Parents are responsible for the care, love, nurturing
and protection of their children. When parents experience difficulties
relatives, friends and local communities step in. When the child still faces the
risk of harm government must intervene. But child protection is not the sole
domain of a single agency, and nor can it be. Justice Wood made that clear, and
the Government agrees: it is a shared responsibility.

Agencies such as
health, disability services, education, police and juvenile justice are at the
front line in connecting children and young people to help and support as early
as possible. Prevention and early intervention are key themes in the
Government's response to the Wood report. We need to get help to families early,
before their problems escalate, and we need to make a special effort to support
Aboriginal children, who are so dramatically overrepresented in our child
protection system. Under the new threshold contained in this bill only those
cases where children are at risk of significant harm will be reported to the
Department of Community Services helpline.

The special commission made
some very pertinent points about our current threshold for mandatory reporting.
Justice Wood stated that around 30 per cent of reports currently made to the
Department of Community Services did not warrant statutory intervention, that
New South Wales has the lowest reporting threshold of anywhere in Australia, and
that the level of cooperative response to the needs of children was low. In
response to these legitimate concerns the changed reporting threshold is about
getting all relevant Government agencies involved in working with children and
families who need additional support. Contrary to the Opposition's comments, it
is not about lessening accountability; it is about getting services to families
who currently have little or no assistance, and getting them there sooner. It is
not about lessening the workload of the Department of Community
Services.

Under these proposals the Department of Community Services will
continue to work with children in need of statutory protection. A change in
definition will not alter the reality of when the department has to intervene
and take a matter before the Children's Court. What will change is the
additional support available to those children and families who have been
identified by Child Wellbeing Units as needing help but who do not require
statutory intervention. What will change is that the Department of Community
Services will have better information coming to it from Child Wellbeing Units
about those families needing statutory intervention. Information about children
coming to the attention of these units will be shared to make sure that children
do not fall through the cracks. I note that all speakers in this debate have
worried and deliberated about that issue but it is not the case, and it is wrong
to suggest that less significant incidents will be "unmarked and
unrecorded".

The bill also gives effect to Justice Wood's finding that
barriers to the sharing of information need to be overcome. There are other
changes in this bill that will improve the court process in relation to the care
and protection of children. The issue of how child deaths are reviewed and
monitored has attracted a great deal of attention and I will make some comments
on that. First, let it be clear to all members that the Government believes that
a rigorous external review of child deaths is an essential part of the child
protection system. Secondly, members should be aware that all of the
Government's proposals are motivated by a desire to see improvements in the
operation of our child protection system.

The Ombudsman currently has
responsibility for the review of seven different categories of deaths, known as
reviewable deaths under the Community Services (Complaints, Reviews and
Monitoring) Act 1993. Those categories of reviewable deaths are children in
care; children reported to the Department of Community Services in the previous
three years; the siblings of children reported to the Department of Community
Services in the previous three years; children whose deaths are or may be due to
abuse or neglect or that occur in suspicious circumstances; children who are
inmates of a detention centre, correctional centre or lock-up; persons living
in, or temporarily absent from, certain residential care; and persons who
receive certain disability services.

The special commission recommended
removing the category of children reported to the Department of Community
Services in the previous three years, and the category of the siblings of
children reported in the previous three years. The special commission's view,
which the Government supports, was that the automatic review of a child death by
the Ombudsman simply because the child or the child's sibling was reported to
the Department of Community Services within the previous three years does not
improve our understanding of the relationship between child fatalities and the
child protection system. The Opposition pointed to recent increases in the
"known to DOCS" category of child deaths. The Wood report states that this is
not a reflection on the child protection system. In his report Justice Wood
stated:

•  
  In his report of reviewable deaths in 2006, the Ombudsman said that in most
  cases the circumstances of the child's death had no connection to reported child
  protection concerns".

For example, there is little to gain from an
Ombudsman's review of the death of a child from leukaemia just because his or
her sibling happened to have been notified to the Department of Community
Services for a minor matter two years earlier. The bill implements the special
commission's recommendation 23.2 by removing the two categories of reviewable
deaths relating to children reported to the Department of Community Services in
the past three years from the definition of "reviewable death". This will mean
that the Ombudsman will no longer review those deaths that fall solely within
those categories. However, if the death also falls within one of the other
remaining categories within the definition the Ombudsman would still review
it.

I emphasise that the Ombudsman will continue to review the deaths of
children whose deaths are or may be due to abuse or neglect or that occur in
suspicious circumstances. The Coroner advises the Ombudsman of deaths that fall
into these categories. Contrary to assertions made by the Leader of the
Opposition in question time on 5 March, the tragic death of Dean Shillingsworth
would certainly have been a reviewable death under an amended Community Services
(Complaints, Reviews and Monitoring) Act 1993. I emphasise the point that
reviewable deaths which are investigated by the Ombudsman will continue to
include children in care and children whose death is or may be due to abuse or
neglect or that occurs in suspicious circumstances.

This amendment was
recommended by Justice Wood and supported by the Children's Guardian and the
Coroner, yet the Opposition has opposed it. On the other hand, the Opposition
has said it does not support departures from the recommendations of Justice
Wood. The Opposition cannot have it both ways. As the Opposition is aware, where
a child is reported to the Department of Community Services the report may or
may not be substantiated. The role of the Ombudsman in reviewing child deaths is
to identify systemic issues that, if addressed, might prevent future deaths.
Automatically including the death of every child "known to DOCS" as reviewable,
does not add to our understanding of these systemic issues.

The
Opposition and other parties have also made comments about the Government's
decision to retain the Child Death Review Team in the Commission for Children
and Young People. The Government made this decision after very careful and
serious deliberation. The views of Justice Wood, the Ombudsman, the Commission
for Children and Young People, the Child Death Review Team and peak groups such
as the Council of Social Service of NSW, the Association of Child Welfare
Agencies and the Aboriginal Child, Family and Community Care State Secretariat
[AbSec]—the peak group for Aboriginal out-of-home care agencies—were sought and
taken into account. It was not a decision taken lightly. The Government refutes
absolutely the Opposition's effort to somehow make this out as an attempt by the
Government to reduce scrutiny for political purposes. The Government rejects
that suggestion and finds it offensive. I acknowledge the contributions from Mr
Ian Cohen and the Hon. Robert Brown, who noted that the decision we have come to
on this matter is not politically motivated and has been considered thoughtfully
and genuinely.

The decision to leave the team in its current location
was based on the view reached after careful consideration that the team would be
better able to carry out its important functions under the existing
arrangements. While the Ombudsman's function is to oversee Government activity,
the Child Death Review Team has a much broader research role in relation to the
deaths of children. The Commission for Children and Young People is much better
placed to give effect to the findings of the team, for example, by working with
groups in the community who are able to influence the safety and wellbeing of
children. They have done this successfully, for example, in working with the
NRMA and other groups to bring about various changes in response to a series of
deaths of young children in driveways when parents were reversing their
four-wheel drive cars. The Commission for Children and Young People is simply
far better placed than the Ombudsman to review deaths overall, and to then work
with different groups to bring about changes to reduce deaths.

The team
is working well now. There has been a 38 per cent reduction in child deaths over
the past 10 years, which is something we all welcome. After careful analysis of
all the arguments and the evidence, the recommendation to move the team from the
Commission for Children and Young People to the Ombudsman could not be supported
by the Government. The Child Death Review Team will continue to carry out its
role in relation to the review of child deaths other than those that fall within
the Ombudsman's reviewable deaths jurisdiction. This would include deaths that
fall within the categories that will no longer be reviewable by the
Ombudsman.

The Opposition's claim that "children will die and no-one will
know about it" is false. As to the matter of the Ombudsman's annual report into
child deaths, the Government is implementing the special commission's
recommendation that the report now be delivered every two years. The special
commission was of the belief that biennial rather than annual reporting would
provide a better overview of trends in child death data and result in a more
meaningful discourse about what those trends mean in relation to the operation
of the child protection system. It would also enable more meaningful comment
about progress by agencies in implementing changes recommended by the Ombudsman.

I come now to other issues raised during the debate. It should be noted
by all members that the majority of the legislation will not commence until
January next year. This will allow sufficient time for everyone involved to
prepare for the new system. This will be particularly important for working out
the innovative approaches to be adopted for resolving disputes about contact
between children in care and their families. The special commission identified
that a court is not the best place to work out local, flexible and responsive
ways to deal with disputes over contact between a child and his or her birth
parents. The Government supports that conclusion. However, the Government
further believes that an alternative dispute resolution process should be
devised to assist here. The exact nature of this process needs further work and
an expert advisory group appointed by the Attorney General is a starting point
for that work. This group will include representation by the legal fraternity.
This part of the legislation will not be proclaimed until a satisfactory system
has been developed, which will include an appropriate review mechanism where
alternative dispute resolution is unable to resolve a contact dispute.

The Government notes the Opposition's comments about consideration of
Aboriginal children in the bill and the Government response to Justice Wood's
report. The Government's response, while providing significant initiatives, does
recognise that legislation is not needed to introduce them. Rather the
Government will work with Aboriginal organisations to build their capacity to
provide services earlier to Aboriginal children and families and play a bigger
role in the provision of out-of-home care. The special commission emphasised the
many reasons for the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the system
and the need to tackle systematic disadvantage to improve outcomes for
Aboriginal children. The Government's action plan "Keep them Safe"
outlines a comprehensive set of special measures to work towards reversing
the current intolerable trends and a commitment to consider how all actions in
the plan will contribute to improving outcomes for Aboriginal children.

The Opposition has raised concern that there is not more in the bill for
non-government organisations. This is because the special commission's
recommendations about an enhanced role for non-government organisations [NGOs]
do not require legislative change to be implemented. The Government values the
contribution of NGOs in providing services and supports an expansion of their
role. The Government has committed more than $100 million in the stage 1 funding
package to the non-government sector. It is claimed that the previous $1.2
billion budget enhancement provided little additional support to the NGO sector.
This is simply wrong.

More than $200 million of this money was spent on
the NGO sector in providing early intervention and out-of-home care services. As
a result, expenditure on NGO services increased by 27 per cent between 2002-03
and 2008-09. Justice Wood acknowledged the significant progress achieved through
the 2002 package. I have sought to respond comprehensively to particular issues
raised by the Opposition, which has acknowledged the general merit of this bill.
I have done so in detail and will further set out reasons why the amendments are
being sought during the Committee stage. I thank everyone again for their
contribution. I commend the bill to the House.

Question—That this
bill be now read a second time—put and resolved in the
affirmative.

Motion agreed to.